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AWS Lake Formation vs Databricks comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

AWS Lake Formation
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Databricks
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
94
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (1st), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (5th), Streaming Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of AWS Lake Formation is 3.8%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Databricks is 9.7%, up from 9.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Databricks9.7%
AWS Lake Formation3.8%
Other86.5%
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Ciro Baldim Guerra - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Analytics Engineer at Itau Unibanco S.A.
Has improved data governance by enabling clear ownership and structured access across teams
In my company, Itaú, we don't utilize all AWS offerings due to rigorous security measures. We operate approximately six to eight months behind other available services. I'm uncertain if gaps exist because of this limitation, though the system functions effectively for us. AWS Lake Formation offers column-level access control for databases, but we haven't implemented this feature either because it hasn't been approved by our compliance, governance, or security areas. In our current setup, everyone from my business unit uses the same consumer account. When access is requested for a table, everyone using that business unit account receives access. This could present a security concern, though it benefits new team members who automatically receive all necessary access permissions. However, I struggle to identify specific improvements needed in AWS Lake Formation.
SimonRobinson - PeerSpot reviewer
Governance And Engagement Lead
Improved data governance has enabled sensitive data tracking but cost management still needs work
I believe we could improve Databricks integration with cloud service providers. The impact of our current integration has not been particularly good, and it's becoming very expensive for us. The inefficiencies in our implementation, such as not shutting down warehouses when they're not in use or reserving the right number of credits, have led to increased costs. We made several beginner mistakes, such as not taking advantage of incremental loading and running overly complicated queries all the time. We should be using ETL tools to help us instead of doing it directly in Databricks. We need more experienced professionals to manage Databricks effectively, as it's not as forgiving as other platforms such as Snowflake. I think introducing customer repositories would facilitate easier implementation with Databricks.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We have observed measurable benefits in terms of cost savings, time savings, resource savings, and efficiency improvements in our workflows."
"AWS Lake Formation significantly improves the structure of the data mesh, making it superior to previous structures we used."
"The integration of AWS Lake Formation with the IAM for authentication and authorization is very good; I didn't have any problems in the setup and thought it was simple."
"We use this to reduce latency from minutes to seconds, as we aim for real-time visibility into patient healthcare monitoring."
"The most valuable features of AWS Lake Formation were the access model itself, as it allows implementation of filters, Blueprints, and row-level and column-level security to mask data that shouldn't be accessed by certain entities, enabling granular control without exposing PII data."
"The solution has many features that are applicable to events such as audits."
"The LF-Tag system with granular permissions was key to the project as a functionality of AWS Lake Formation."
"A favorite feature of AWS Lake Formation is that it provides us with visibility into who has access to a particular table or database in Glue."
"Databricks helps crunch petabytes of data in a very short period of time for data scientists or business analysts, helping with fraud analysis, finance, projections, and more, which is exactly the purpose of big data and analytics."
"Stability of the product is good, whether it's handling large volumes, diverse elements of data or processing data at speed."
"Databricks also offers exceptional performance and scalability."
"Databricks is quite easy to use and requires less coding and customizations than a solution like AWS SageMaker, enabling more people to efficiently build and host their ML code while leveraging the already integrated MLflow to track and monitor all our different experiments."
"Databricks has improved my organization by allowing us to transform data from sources to a different format and feed that to the analytics, business intelligence, and reporting teams. This tool makes it easy to do those kinds of things."
"Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed."
"In the manufacturing industry, Databricks can be beneficial to use because of machine learning. It is useful for tasks, such as product analysis or predictive maintenance."
"I would rate them ten out of ten."
 

Cons

"Despite following official documentation, configuration problems persisted, requiring weeks of support from multiple AWS engineers to resolve."
"I would appreciate online support, which I don't have access to in my corporation at the bank, so that is important."
"The main challenge we faced with AWS Lake Formation was related to cross-account sharing. Granting access to other AWS accounts for tables or databases in a different AWS account was somewhat difficult."
"I think AWS Lake Formation could improve by enforcing the least privilege by design, moving from ad hoc grants to role-based access controls."
"I haven't seen any measurable benefits from using AWS Lake Formation, such as time saving, resource saving, or efficiency improvements."
"If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker."
"You need to have data experience to use the product."
"Rather than creating an additional hundred tools, optimizing a tool to have a centralized location to do governance would be beneficial."
"It would be better if it were faster. It can be slow, and it can be super fast for big data."
"The data visualization for this solution could be improved. They have started to roll out a data visualization tool inside Databricks but it is in the early stages. It's not comparable to a solution like Power BI, Luca, or Tableau."
"In my view, the fundamental approach of implementing Databricks is still very code heavy, more than you find in Azure Data Factory and other technologies like Informatica or SQL Server Integration Service."
"Databricks would have more collaborative features than it has. It should have some more customization for the jobs."
"The pricing of Databricks could be cheaper."
"Databricks has added some alerts and query functionality into their SQL persona, but the whole SQL persona, which is like a role, needs a lot of development. The alerts are not very flexible, and the query interface itself is not as polished as the notebook interface that is used through the data science and machine learning persona. It is clunky at present."
"The user experience can be improved. It's not easy to use, and they need a better UI."
"Some of the error messages that we receive are too vague, saying things like "unknown exception", and these should be improved to make it easier for developers to debug problems."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."
"I'm not involved in the financing, but I can say that the solution seemed reasonably priced compared to the competitors. Similar products are usually in the same price range. With five being affordable and one being expensive, I would rate Databricks a four out of five."
"Databricks are not costly when compared with other solutions' prices."
"We pay as we go, so there isn't a fixed price. It's charged by the unit. I don't have any details detail about how they measure this, but it should be a mix between processing and quantity of data handled. We run a simulation based on our use cases, which gives us an estimate. We've been monitoring this, and the costs have met our expectations."
"The cost is around $600,000 for 50 users."
"I would rate the tool’s pricing an eight out of ten."
"The solution uses a pay-per-use model with an annual subscription fee or package. Typically this solution is used on a cloud platform, such as Azure or AWS, but more people are choosing Azure because the price is more reasonable."
"Price-wise, I would rate Databricks a three out of five."
"We implement this solution on behalf of our customers who have their own Azure subscription and they pay for Databricks themselves. The pricing is more expensive if you have large volumes of data."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
6%
Construction Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Healthcare Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise57
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Lake Formation?
I don't understand much about the pricing of AWS Lake Formation, but I know how to search for the cost of Glue jobs, and I use the calculator in Amazon. I use a tool to preview the cost based on th...
What needs improvement with AWS Lake Formation?
Regarding areas of AWS Lake Formation that could be improved or enhanced, I prefer not to answer, mainly because I do not believe that I would be the most valuable person to ask, as I have not used...
What is your primary use case for AWS Lake Formation?
My usual use cases for AWS Lake Formation involved securing and governing the data resources that we configured in AWS, but we did not use the analytics or machine learning capabilities specificall...
Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?
Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...
How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?
We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...
Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?
Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Lake Formation vs. Databricks and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.